The next letter from Mr. Brady, written the day after the assault, and while Mr. Smith was confined in bed on account of the bruises he had received, was as follows:
"W. W. Smith, Esq., Agent, Sutton Junction.
"Dear Sir,—Within the past four or five weeks the heads of different departments, as well as Mr. Leonard, the General Superintendent, and myself, have received numerous complaints from shippers and the public generally with reference to your actions with the late prosecution of liquor sellers in Brome County. The basis of these complaints is made that you have used your position as agent for this Company to procure evidence with which to prosecute liquor sellers. I have replied to some of these people that so far as I can ascertain you have not used your position as agent to procure such evidence; but I must inform you that the same rule with reference to temperance agitation that governs employees of this Company with reference to politics must be lived up to, i. e., you must devote your whole and entire time to the Railway Company if you desire to hold your position. You must do nothing whatever to antagonize the interests of the Company, or to create feeling between the Company and its patrons. You will understand by this that you must cease temperance lecturing or taking an active part in temperance gatherings or agitation.
"I make this letter personal as I consider that the contents of it will remain strictly between ourselves.
"Yours truly,
"F. P. Brady.
"Farnham, July 9th, 1894."
This letter is very emphatic, and if the spirit of it were carried out in every case as faithfully as Mr. Brady endeavored to carry it out in this case, the employees of the road would be a band of slaves, and the Canadian Pacific Railway a sort of Canadian Siberia with all its positions shunned by every self-respecting laborer. It is well, indeed, for the Canadian Pacific Railway that all its officers do not carry out these tyrannical rules with such precision as this, yet it is plainly inferred by Mr. Brady's words that such rules had been previously applied in the matter of politics.
If so, the Canadian public need to stop and realize what a moderate autocrat they are supporting in their midst in a land of responsible rule.
Mr. Brady says: "You must do nothing whatever to antagonize the interests of the Company, or to create feeling between the Company and its patrons." This seems to be a very strange sentence in two respects. First, how can temperance work "antagonize the interests of the Company?" A railroad is always supported by a community, and must depend entirely upon that community for its success, its wealth and its very existence. The more wealthy and prosperous a people become, the more will they patronize a railroad and contribute to its maintenance and growth. The community, moreover, is made up of individuals, and its prosperity must depend upon the health, enterprise, ability, success and moral character of the people who compose it. Does not temperance tend to build up the virtues and prosperity of individuals, and thus to increase the general prosperity of the country and add to the success of all useful public institutions?
Second, how can temperance work "create feeling between the Company and its patrons?" Surely not all the patrons of the Canadian Pacific Railway are wholesale and illicit liquor sellers? Mr. Brady seems to entirely ignore the great company of law-abiding temperance people who would respect the Company far more if its employees were active temperance men, and with whom Mr. Brady himself, rather than Mr. Smith, created intense feeling.